Gospels In Conflict: John and Thomas - Part 2

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

 

We concluded Part 1 with the following:

 

(p.32) " These discoveries challenged us not only intellectually but--in my case

at least--spiritually. I had come to respect the work of " church fathers " such

as Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons (c.180), who had denounced such secret writings as

" an abyss of madness, and blasphemy against Christ. " [5] Therefore I expected

these recently discovered texts to be garbled, pretentious, and trivial. Instead

I was surprised to find in some of them unexpected spiritual power--in sayings

such as this from the Gospel of Thomas, translated by Professor MacRae: " Jesus

said: 'If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save

you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth

will destroy you.' " [6] The strength of this saying is that it does not tell us

what to believe but challenges us to discover what lies hidden within ourselves;

and, with a shock of recognition, I realized that this perspective seemed to me

self-evidently true. "

 

Beyond Belief (The Secret Gospel of Thomas) Chapter 2, p.32

 

Notes:

 

[5] Irenaeus, AH 1, 'Praefatio'.

 

[6] Gospel of Thomas 70, in Nag Hammadi Library (hereafter NHL) 126, where this

difficult passage is translated differently and, in my view, less lucidly.

Throughout the present text, I have taken liberties with NHL translations in the

interest of clarity or of preserving the poetic quality of the original text;

thus, readers who consult the NHL may note variations.

 

Here now, is Part 2.

 

Enjoy,

 

violet

 

 

 

Gospels In Conflict: John and Thomas - Part 2

 

(p.33) In 1979 I published 'The Gnostic Gospels', a preliminary exploration of

the impact of the Nag Hammadi discoveries. Now, about twenty years later, many

scholars say that these texts may not be " gnostic " --since many of us are asking

what that perplexing term means. Insofar as 'gnostic' refers to one who " knows, "

that is, who seeks experiential insight, it may characterize many of these

sources accurately enough; but more often the " church fathers " used the term

derisively to refer to those they dismissed as people claiming to " know it all. "

One thoughtful scholar, Michael Williams, suggests that we should no longer use

the term, and another, Karen King, demonstrates its many connotations. [7]

Nevertheless, I intended that book to raise certain questions: Why had the

church decided that these texts were " heretical " and that only the canonical

gospels were " orthodox " ? Who made those decisions, and under what conditions? As

my colleagues and I looked for answers, I began to understand the political

concerns that shaped the early Christian movement.

 

Thanks to research undertaken since that time and shared by many scholars

throughout the world, what that book attempted to offer as a kind of rough,

charcoal sketch of the history of Christianity now can be seen as if under an

electron microscope--yielding considerably more clarity, detail, and accuracy.

What I focus on in this book is how certain Christian leaders from the second

century through the fourth came to reject many other sources of revelation and

construct instead the New Testament gospel canon of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and

John along with the " canon of truth, " which became the nucleus of the later

creeds that have defined Christianity to this day.

 

As I worked with many other scholars to edit and annotate these Nag Hammadi

texts, we found that this research gradually (p.34) clarified--and

complicated--our understanding of the origins of Christianity. For instead of

discovering the purer, simpler " early Christianity " that many of us had been

looking for, we found ourselves in the midst of a more diverse and complicated

world than any of us could have imagined. For example, many scholars are now

convinced that the New Testament Gospel of John, probably written at the end of

the first century, emerged from an intense debate over who Jesus was--or is. [8]

To my surprise, having spent many months comparing the Gospel of John with the

Gospel of Thomas, which may have been written at about the same time, I have now

come to see that John's gospel was written in the heat of controversy, to defend

certain views of Jesus and to oppose others.

 

This research has helped clarify not only what John's gospel is 'for' but what

it is 'against'. John says explicitly that he writes " so that you may 'believe,

and believing, may have life' in [Jesus'] name. " [9] What John opposed, as we

shall see, includes what the Gospel of Thomas teaches--that God's light shines

not only in Jesus but, potentially at least, in everyone. Thomas's gospel

encourages the hearer not so much to 'believe in Jesus', as John requires, as to

'seek to know God' through one's own, divinely given capacity, since all are

created in the image of God. For Christians in later generations, the Gospel of

John helped provide a foundation for a unified church, which Thomas, with its

emphasis on each person's search for God, did not.

 

I have also learned after years of study that, although John's gospel is written

with great simplicity and power, its meaning is by no means obvious. Even its

first generation of readers (c.90 to 130 C.E.) disagreed about whether John was

a true gospel (p.35) or a false one--and whether it should be part of the New

Testament. [10] John's defenders among early Christians revered it as the

" 'logos' gospel " --the gospel of the divine word of reason ('logos', in

Greek)--and derided those who opposed it as " irrational " ('alogos', lacking

reason). Its detractors, by contrast, were quick to point out that John's

narrative differs significantly from those of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. As I

compared John with these other gospels, I saw that at certain points this is

true, and that some of these differences are much more than variations on a

theme.

 

Beyond Belief (The Secret Gospel of Thomas)

Chapter 2, p.32-35

Elaine Pagels

Vintage Books, New York, U.S.A

ISBN: 0-375-70316-0

 

Notes:

 

[7]See the incisive book by Michael Williams, 'Rethinking Gnosticism: An

Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category' (Princeton, 1996); and most

recently, Karen King's major new book, 'What is Gnosticism'? (Cambridge, 2003).

See also Bentley Layton, " Prolegomena to the Study of Ancient Gnosticism, " in

I.M. White and O.L. Yarbrough, eds., 'The Social World of the Early Christians:

Essays in Honor of Wayne A Meeks' (Minneapolis, 1995), 334-350; as well as the

thoughtful essay by Antti Marjanen, " Is Thomas a Gnostic Gospel? " in the

outstanding collection edited by Risto Uro, 'Thomas at the Crossroads: Essays on

the Gospel of Thomas' (Edinburgh, 1998), 107-139. James Robinson also edited a

one-volume English translation of all the texts discovered as 'The Nag Hammadi

Library in English' (San Francisco, 1977); Bentley Layton later published

another translation as 'The Gnostic Scriptures' (New York, 1987). The most

complete edition available in English, however, is 'The Nag Hammadi Series',

over twenty volumes published by Brill Press in the Netherlands, which include

the Coptic texts with English introductions, translations, and notes.

 

[8] See, for example, Steven Davies, 'The Gospel of Thomas and Wisdom Tradition'

(New York, 1963); Stephen J. Patterson, 'The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus'

(Sonoma, Calif., 1993); Gregory J. Riley, 'Resurrection Reconsidered: Thomas and

John in Controversy' (Minneapolis, 1995); April De Conick, 'Seek to See Him:

Ascent and Vision Mysticism in the " Gospel of Thomas " ' (Leiden, New York, and

Cologne, 1996); also her fascinating essay " 'Blessed are those who have not

seen' (John 20:29): Johannine Dramatization of an Early Christian Discourse, " in

J.D. Turner and A. McGuire, eds., 'The Nag Hammadi Library After Fifty Years'

(Leiden, New York, and Cologne, 1997), 381-400.

 

[9] John 20:8; yet see the incisive critique of this kind of usage in

Paul-Hubert Poirer, " The Writings Ascribed to Thomas and the Thomas Tradition, "

in Turner and McGuire, 'Nag Hammadi Library After Fifty Years', 295-397.

 

[10] For discussion, see Chapter 4; also, among the many scholarly works on this

issue, Maurice F. Wiles, 'The Spiritual Gospel: The Interpretation of the Fourth

Gospel in the Early Church' (Cambridge, 1960); T.E. Pollard, 'Johannine

Christology and the Early Church' (Cambridge, 1960); C.H. Dodd, 'Interpretation

of the

Fourth Gospel' (Cambridge, 1953); and E. Pagels, 'The Johannine Gospel in

Gnostic Exegesis' (Nashville, 1973).